Quitting
by clair beaubien
Summary: Sam quits hunting. Dean thinks Sam is quitting him.


Author's Note: Not exactly a happy ending. I'm hoping once I see the actual episode, a sequel with a very happy ending will suggest itself to me.

SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN

Angels make lousy company when you're at a strip club.

Tonight, I want to get drunk, ogle some so-so women, and forget that Sam has quit hunting - and _me_. _Again_. Only I don't want to do it alone, so I convince Cas he needs to experience more of life on earth, including a little time spent at a small town strip joint. He comes with. I don't know why, but he actually comes with.

Maybe he's just as lonely as I am.

He's not acres of fun, I can tell you that. He keeps murmuring about _the dignity of women_ and something about _throwing pearls before swine_, and all the while looking like he's watching somebody throw mud on the Mona Lisa. Sammy was embarrassed the first time I ever took him to a place like this; at least he wasn't a wet blanket.

_Sammy_

No – you know what? He wants to quit hunting, wants to quit me – _fine_. It's probably better that way. He lost everything this past year – his perspective, his training, his damn common sense. You can't hunt without those things. And yeah - you know what else? A hunter _doesn't lose_ those things, he throws them away. Sam threw all those things away.

So I guess he threw me away too..

.

Cas tries a drink like it's holy water to evil. Yeah, so, whiskey is an acquired taste. Ogling women shouldn't be though. Of course, even before he was an angel, Jimmy was an upstanding, straight arrow, devout man. Probably prayed more than Sam does.

Did.

Whatever.

I don't even know if he still prays.

So what? Not like it's my problem anymore.

So anyway, getting Cas to loosen up is like trying to pull lug nuts off the Titanic. Two thousand years of chastity and sobriety I guess can be a lot to overcome. But he needs to loosen up.

'Cause, like – he just lost his home too. He has nowhere to go. And all I have to go back to is a motel room with a brother who doesn't want to have to do anything with me anymore. Yeah, _there's_ an incentive to leave this place anytime soon.

Sam says he doesn't trust himself enough to keep hunting and – well – yeah, okay. That makes sense.

No – you know what? It doesn't make sense. So he doesn't trust himself. Fine. _Trust me_ then. Work with _me_. _Hunt with me_.

But maybe what he really means is that he doesn't trust me. He doesn't trust me to trust him.

And maybe I don't trust him. Not 100%. It's kind of hard to walk when you don't know from each step to the next whether one leg is going to support you or not.

God – I miss my brother.

Cas is busy averting his eyes and staring outright and looking like he's about to stand up and go all 'fire and brimstone' on unrepentant sinners _and_ looking like he feels their pain and understands their need and commiserates with their misery.

Maybe underneath we're _all_ homeless and lonely. All in this together alone.

If Sam wants to give up hunting, wants to give up _me_, who am I to tell him different? I'm not somebody he'll listen to, that's for sure. He stopped listening to me a long time ago.

No, it wasn't that long ago. It was just a couple of days before Lilith committed Suicide by Sasquatch. Suicide by Schmuck.

By a man driven past the end of desperation and need and hopelessness.

That's when he stopped listening to me, that night in the motel. He stopped listening to me when I said he needed to get rid of that skank. He stopped listening to me when all he could hear was that damn demon blood pounding in his ears.

He stopped listening to me when I stopped talking to him and started accusing him instead.

_Sammy_

How am I supposed to make this better? Or hell – how do I know if I'm even supposed to _try_? Maybe – maybe – _you know_? All this started because Sam was in hunting to start with. Maybe – maybe – if he's not in hunting anymore, maybe –

Some seven-eighths-undressed, just-this-side-of-middle-aged stripper offers Cas a lap dance and the look on his face makes me worried that I'm going to have to explain to him what that is. But then she gets hailed by some other guy farther away in the corner and leaves before 'awkward' turns into 'never look you in the eye again'.

Sam wants to quit hunting. He wants to quit -

As if he's been reading my mind, Castiel suddenly turns to me and tells me,

"Sam's not quitting _you_, you know."

No, he's better off if he does. Maybe this is finally the way I can save him. Let him quit hunting, let him quit me.

"Yeah – _he is_."

The End.

. . 


End file.
